The Sphere Of Criminal Investigation: Forensic Investigator (Research Paper Sample)

FORENSIC INVESTIGATOR
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Over the years people have contributed a lot to the sphere of criminal investigation and forensic science in order to improve the crime disclosure. Nowadays the forensic science is fostered by the numerous societies and has succeeded much more in detection of crimes. The following paper describes a brief history of criminal investigation and forensic science. It also explains the main purpose of forensic psychology and a work of a forensic investigator in particular. It also describes the innovations in forensic investigation due to the changes in modern life and opportunities that today society gives to the specialists who work or want to work in this field.
The most important and fundamental purpose of the investigation process of each crime is to discover the truth. The roots of criminal investigation go back to the eighteenth century England, in a period that was most noticeably marked by social, political and economic changes. The development of the first detective force, known as Bow street runners, and reformation in police made by Robert Peel influenced the development of organization of police and criminal investigation in the US. The agricultural and industrial revolutions in the eighteenth century were also the starting points for the changes in police services work and conduction of investigations. The innovations in agriculture sectors freed people from farm works. Thus they moved to bigger cities where the slum dwellers have also expanded, which way of life was robbers and thefts. This factor increased the level of crimes and demanded for more control from the government side. The reformation in England was noticed in the US and a competent police force was developed. America needed its reformations due to the fact of corruption among the big- city police officers, the limitation in jurisdiction of sheriffs’ offices and municipal offices and lack of shared information among law- enforcement agencies. A need in reliable investigators formed the first recorded private detective agency. The first famous and the most efficient agency was formed by Allan Pinkerton, who understood the importance of information from the crime scenes to be recorded and publication. Such gathering of useful information included photographs which Pinkerton made. The fact that photographs will enable police workers to find the criminals in the future led the set up of rogues’ gallery that illustrated the faces of offenders. In places where state or private police agencies didn’t exist, special departments were focusing on traffic enforcement and criminal investigation. In such arrangements the crime laboratory was made by the separate department as a part of the state investigation agency. In 1908 the US attorney general created the special group of investigations, today known as the Federal Bureau of Investigation (the FBI). After the Prohibition was rescinded, more bootleggers and other criminals have turned to bank robbers and this was FBI’s mater to deal with them. The importance of information about such criminals to be gathered and recorded and the publicity have changed the efficiency of the FBI, establishing it as the crime laboratory with its services available for the state and local police. When in 1914 Harrison Act stated the non medical drugs to be a federal crime, it has created the separated Federal Bureau of Narcotics and Dangerous Drugs in the Department of Justice. Nowadays, this department is devoted to fighting against the international drug traffic.
Forensic science is a complex of disciplines such as physics, chemistry, mathematics, biology and geology that study physical evidence connected to the crime. The first forensic laboratory was created in France in 1910. It provided the earliest data of biometric based identification of person and identification of fire- arms. The most important goal of biometric measurements was and is now to identify the individuals through characteristics on their body. Anthropometric as one of the scientific systems stated that every human differed from others in the exact measurements of their body and thus the characteristic formula for every individual was different. Such idea was abandoned because the system of fingerprints was discovered which most of the European countries found more reliable and simpler. Known from the eighth century, in began to be used in the scientific world because of the attention to the system of pores and ridges in the hands, which were discovered as unique for every human. In forensic science, fingerprints were used for the classification of criminal records. The FBI and its partners in the law used fingerprints system not only for the identification of the individual, but more importantly, to figure out who someone is. For example, fingerprint left on the murder weapon or a bomb gives opportunity to find the criminal. Such data is typically scanned to the database of records for a match and then stored as records of the certain case. Along with the possibility to unclose the criminals, forensic scientists of a modern world use DNA to prove the guilt or innocence of the individuals on trial. Thanks to the development of science, DNA testing allows identifying an individual to an accuracy of one of the hundred trillion. The science of DNA states that every human has a unique encryption used positively for the identification. DNA traces are usually found in almost every cell of the body including blood, skin, semen, saliva and hair. Forensic investigators should handle these traces, obtained for example from a toothbrush or hair follicle to find whether it is the evidence against certain person connected to some crime. Science and forensic investigators are changing the way police investigated cases that remained unsolved for years, especially in high profile cases where DNA evidence was hard to receive. Thus in 1996 a trategy involving a ten- year- old girl, who was murdered in from of her house remained unsolved for many years. Police officers had no witnesses and no obvious evidence. But 2009, when detectives turned for help to the forensics to examine evidence in case such as clothes and body swabs, the case went off the ground. The forensics determined that fingernails from the victim would probably have some results and will point on the murderer. Using visible and alternative light sources, the DNA discovered the clippings and swabbed areas that didn’t belong to the victim. The analysis showed that DNA belonged to the man, who used to live not far from the victim at that time. Resilient litle girl who with an effort to fight against her offender took the important evidence and the science of DNA gave an opportunity to find the truth and jail the criminal.
The type of weapon with what the crime was committed is also paid great attention by the criminalists. To analyze the bullets or the weapons at the scene of a crime, special trained experts, the ballistics experts are welcomed. They determine whether the situation was accidental, homicidal or the act of suicide took place. Certain parameters as distance between the weapon and the victim or the angle of the trajectory of bullet fire and the entry, as well as bullet and shell casing analysis help to investigate the crime and find the criminal. Ballistics expert are people who come from the law enforcement background and transition. When some of them come from the metallurgy or mechanical engineering, they need to understand the basis of the crime scene work and how to handle the evidence, gun powders, fire arm identification, its assembly and general expert. Forensic investigators should pay attention to all the details during the examining of the crime scene. The blood spot can either point the right direction in the investigation or become the unconditional evidence that will help to find the real criminal. Since there’s no substitute for it, as only for medical and forensic purposes, blood found at crime place may be the most inportant evidence in criminal justice today. Bloodstrain patterns may tell about the position or movement of the victim during the crime. Even in cases with the identical twins, who have the same DNA profile, they have completely different antibody profiles and this is quiet promising field of forensic serology today. Recently, the case of murder that involved a young woman who was cleared up by the forensic investigators. The evidence examination provided necessary data to prove the vistim’s- in- laws tried to mislead the forensic investigators by telling the false story. The mother- in-law of the victim told the investigation team that her daughter- in-law died during the struggle with the thiefs who wanted to committ a robbery at her house. However, the laboratory investigators sdudied the blood evidence on various articles and provided the fact against the in- laws of the victim who turned to be the real murders.
Forensic investigator cooperates with the police departments as the specialists with the degree in biology and chemistry and in the related fields. The first thing they do is at the crime scene, where they create the sketch of the scene; include the victims and the evidence. Such drawing in addition to photographs of the crime scene will be used to help record the original state of the crime scene for the investigation purposes. Then a complicated process of collecting the evidence comes. This part of the investigator’s work is rather hard, as some crimes have evidence located and spread over certain territory. At this stage the forensic investigator collects the fingerprints and DNA traces as the evidence. The important part of his job is to preserve the evidence of its originally state, carefully bagging it, sealing or recording. Such evidences help the investigator to formulate the hypothesis of the reasons of the...